During the debate last night, Romney talked about how, as governor of Massachusetts, he aggressively pursued the hiring of women in his office. Naturally, abortion backers and the Obama campaign are attempting to use this pro-woman action against him.

“We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our Cabinet,” Romney explained during the debate on Tuesday. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

The Obama campaign released a statement criticizing Romney’s attitude toward women and Vice President Biden questioned Romney’s meaning in an interview on Wednesday morning.

“There is an abundance” of “quality women,” Biden told CBS’s “This Morning.” “I’ve never had any problem, when there is a job opening, having as many women apply as men.”

Paul Ryan responded: “All he simply meant was that he went out of his way to try to recruit qualified women to serve in his administration when he was governor,” Ryan said on “CBS This Morning.” “That’s really what he was saying.”

“By the way, he has an exceptional record of hiring women in very prominent positions in his administration, and that’s the point he was making,” Ryan said. “The other point is, this economy has been terrible for women. Poverty rates among women are at a 17-year high. We need jobs, we need economic growth. And among those who have been hit hardest in this economy are women.

“So what he was pointing out to was that he went out of his way to find qualified women to serve in senior positions in his administration,” Ryan added. “And he did just that, and he had one of the most exceptional records of governors in the country.”

As The Hill reports, liberals have been aggressively attacking Romney online.

The remark almost immediately went viralon Tuesday night following the debate, in parody accounts on Twitter and Facebook as well as a popular meme on Tumblr.

According to Facebook, the reference to “binders full of women” resultedin a 213,900 percent surge in mentions at one point during the evening. One Facebook page focused around the topic already has 230,000 “likes.”

“Binders full of women” was the No. 3 search term associated with the debate on Google, and according to Yahoo, search interest in the term was up 691 percent following the debate.

It was also the moment that celebrities were tweeting about the most the morning after the debate.

The writers at the conservative Commentary magazine struck back in their criticism of those misusing the “binders” remark.

Mitt Romney mentioned “binders full of women” in describing his (extremely successful) efforts to hire women for top-level jobs when he was governor of Massachusetts. We all knew exactly what he meant, but really; boo hoo hoo, sniff sniff sniff — the phraseology!

So shocking that Mr. Romney seems to have forgotten about your too, too delicate sensibilities.